Malaysiakini Letters – Climate Change Mitigation = Insanity

Be sure to check out the comments by Mr M who accuses me of living in a dream world where I can’t see the effects of a warming world, yet obviously did not even bother clicking on the single link to see the citations and evidence (including photos) I collected.

Standard troll who barely skims through a post he disagrees before attacking a straw man fantasy.

Since the beginning of our planet’s history, climate has been changing – from the ice ages to the Medieval Warm Period to our present time. It is only sensible for us to keep adapting to the constant change that the planet has wrought since long before we lit the first cooking fire.

However, the writer seems to focus only on strategies to mitigate climate change – carbon neutrality, renewable energy, environmentally-friendly products, Copenhagen COP 15. All of these measures are based on the theory that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will drastically change the climate through the phenomenon known as global warming.

Quite frankly, the theory that carbon dioxide is the main driver of global temperature has been battered left, right and centre by recent events.

First, the actual data shows that for throughout the known temperature record stretching back tens of thousands of years, temperature rises first – followed 800 years later by carbon dioxide. Got that? Temperature rise causes carbon dioxide increase. In essence, this is the reverse of what the global warming theory says, unless the modern world somehow follows totally different laws of physics from the past.

Second, even as carbon dioxide levels have been steadily rising with every passing year, there has been no increase in recent temperatures. The BBC reports, ‘For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures…even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise’.

Even global warming researchers concur on this point, with the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU) researchers admitting in the Climategate files: ‘I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

Another email says, ‘The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t’.

Climategate has rocked the world of science with its admissions of no recent warming, coupled with a conspiracy to tamper with the data so that the end result would fool the public and policymakers into seeing warming. I suggest that the reader do an Internet search for the term.

Third, the real world itself testifies against global warming. Arctic ice levels are the same today as in 1979, with sea ice increasing at record rates. Antarctic ice levels are today at the highest levels ever measured, with continental ice increasing at record rates.

In 2008, China had its coldest temperatures in 100 years, Pakistan in 70 years, Sydney in 50 years, Mumbai in 40 years, and Takijistan in 25 years. Snow fell in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates for the first times in known history. More evidence here.

Fourth, the Copenhagen Treaty and its predecessor the Kyoto Protocol are a waste of time, resources and public attention. If carbon dioxide doesn’t actually cause global warming, then what is the whole point of restrictions on carbon emissions?

If Kyoto and Copenhagen were cost and drawback free, then there would be no problems with implementing the recommendations – just for fun!

However, the facts belie that fantasy. For Germany alone, in 2005 alone, adherence to the Kyoto Protocol cost 6.2 billion Euros in increased energy costs. Continued adherence is estimated to result in a loss of 18.5 billion Euros by 2010 – and that’s without applying the stricter parameters negotiated at Copenhagen.

How about more recent results? Australia’s Kyoto-styled Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is due for 2010. Starting steps towards it have already caused electricity prices to shoot up 22%, with a predicted doubling of energy costs by 2015.

And what has all this massive spending actually accomplished? Unfortunately, nothing – since the Kyoto Protocol was enacted, the European Union only had a 1.5% decrease in carbon emissions, instead of the Kyoto Protocol target of 8% decrease. Signatory Japan even had an 8% increase, and Canada a 22% increase.

So even if carbon dioxide does cause global warming which leads to catastrophic climate change (and it doesn’t), restrictions on carbon emissions simply do not achieve their stated goal – while tossing literally billions into the furnace, during a global recession no less!

Do we really want Malaysia to join in this insanity? For I recall that Einstein had another, more well-known adage: ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’.

Copenhagen is just a repeat of the failed policies of Kyoto, in fact, done more extremely. To expect it to achieve anything but waste even more billions is insane. Malaysia should have no part in this madness.

And yes, Einstein may have been right when he said, ‘We can’t solve the problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them’.

But I’ll counter with two other adages: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ and ‘Don’t use a hammer to swat a fly’. That is, if human activity is not really causing catastrophic climate change, then don’t implement measures that cripple our economic capabilities while achieving absolutely nothing. Instead, spend some of those wasted billions on adapting to the climate change that we cannot control.

Don’t get me wrong – I am strongly supportive of real environmental measures such as rainforest conservation and bio-diversity preservation. I am even in favour of weaning off fossil fuels – gradually and guided by market forces, not prematurely and forced along by draconian laws.

But please – let’s not waste any more time, money and public attention of global warming. We could better spend those billions lost through adherence to carbon limits on providing clean water to Third World countries, cleaning up Beijing’s choking smog and fixing our injured economies.